Nothing says style like an over-priced glittery imprint of an Argentinian Marxist revolutionary…
The Che Guevara wiki page says:
Since his death, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol and global insignia within popular culture.
but its not really counterculture if the purse is $650 dollars and sold on a high-end fashion webpage…
Little did he know, he’d be BEDAZZLED someday!
This could be seen as hypocritical, because here are four ‘old white men’ holding up funding to a program that serves a predominately minority constituency of CHILDREN, while these same four ‘old white men’ are NOT PUSHING FOR REFORM on the hundred million dollar bonuses of their ‘old white men’ Wall Street buddies.
Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, Jon Kyl R-AZ and John Cornyn, R-TX have joined together to block further federal funding of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
The allegations against Boys and Girls Clubs of America are:
Roxanne Spillett, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, received a total compensation of $988,591 in 2008, according to the charity’s tax filings. She got a base salary of $360,774, a bonus of $150,000 and other compensation of $83,152, for a total of $593,926. She also received $385,500 in deferred compensation, most of which went to a retirement plan, and $9,165 in nontaxable benefits.
They are concerned that:
the chief executive of a charity that has been closing local clubs for lack of funding was compensated nearly $1 million in 2008. They also questioned why in the same year officials spent $4.3 million on travel, $1.6 million on conferences, conventions and meetings, and $544,000 in lobbying fees.
Hmmm, excessive travel and conference expenses, conventions and meetings and LOBBYING FEES? Sounds like the typical life of a POLITICIAN. What these men do not tell you is how many officials were included in that $4.3 million travel spending, whether the $1.6 million spent on conferences were to put on one conference or fifty, and why in all fairness a childrens’ organization NEEDS to spend $544,000 to LOBBY for funding…
Here’s what Boys and Girls Clubs of America accomplish:
Boys and Girls Clubs of America have helped millions of kids across America, including R&B singer, Usher.
From academic failure and gang violence to poverty, drugs and obesity, America’s youth face a daunting array of problems – with serious consequences and fewer safety nets at home and in the community. According to a 2007 BGCA alumni survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 57 percent of alumni reported, “The Club saved my life,” while another 28 percent credited Boys & Girls Clubs with keeping them in school.
“Growing up in the Club, I had the chance to experience a lot of positive things; it helped reinforce the values I learned at home including good character, leadership and giving back to my community, my country and my world,” said Usher. “It’s where I developed my love of singing and performing, received help with my homework, and it’s where I found a safe place to go after school.”
So how do we begin to have constructive change, when the complainers do exactly what they’re trying to stop?
And why do our kids need lobbyists to fight for money that is channeled to Big Banks whose CEOs’ crazy annual incomes are NEVER LIMITED?
Where is the integrity?
Today is a national day of protest for students:
Students, professors, teachers and unions around the country will organize today to protest America’s imperiled system of education with more than 100 events in 32 states.
The movement started in California, where the public college system has been seized by tension and dissatisfaction over proposed tuition hikes, budget cuts and a series of racist events on University of California and California State campuses.
At the same time that we’re upping their educational costs, think about this:
The founding fathers said that our national debt should be paid off every generation. They said it is immoral to saddle the next generation with debt. Today we are saddling not only the next generation but the next and the next. This is taxation without representation because we are putting our posterity in debt when they are not old enough to vote on it.
Its not exactly fair to make students pay more for the ability to discover the ways in which we’ve betrayed them.
In California, Governor Schwarzenegger wants to tie education spending to prison spending, because only 7.5% of the general fund goes to higher education but a whopping 11% goes to the prison system.
So kids, we won’t educate you, but we’ll sure house you for life!
On this day of protest, let’s give students our support. We’d rather have them smart so they can dig us out of the mess we’re in, so they can provide GOOD FOOD to us when we’re in nursing homes in just a few decades… We’ll be in trouble if they are all uneducated or incarcerated.
According to Lawrence Lessig, there are two places we are in denial:
The first is that things are actually much worse than anyone ever talks about. The pivot points of our financial system — the infrastructure that lets free markets produce real wealth — have become profoundly corrupted. Balance sheets are “fictions,” as Professor Frank Partnoy put it. Trillions of dollars in liability hide behind these fictions. And as expert after expert demonstrated, practically every one of the design flaws that led to the collapse of the past few years remains essentially unchanged within our financial system still. That bubble burst, but we can already see the soaring profits of the same firms that sucked billions in taxpayer funds. The cycle has started again.
You know all about the billion dollar bonuses, but have you forgotten about the billion dollar bailout?
But the second point was even worse. Expert after expert spoke as if the problems we faced were simple math errors. As if regulators had just miscalculated, like a pilot who accidentally overshoots the run way, or an engineer who mis-estimates the weight of cargo on a plane. And so, because these were mere errors, people spoke as if these errors could be corrected by a bunch of good ideas….
But we aren’t in our current double dip recession because of math errors, that’s blind. We are here because our governmental system is beholden to political interests and guess who has the most money to throw at Congress? The same unregulated corporations who put a gun to the global economy’s head, took obscene profits, got bailed out (remember that you’re not getting bailed out via credit card reform or mortgage reform or healthcare reform) paid themselves bonuses and are now experiencing a bump in their business (WHY? because they’ve again BET AGAINST AMERICA).
Lessig has a solution:
We need to admit our (democracy’s) problem. We need to get beyond this stage of denial. We need to recognize that until we release our leaders from a system that forces them to ignore good sense when there is an opportunity for large campaign cash, we won’t have policy that makes sense. Wall Street continues unchanged because the Congress that would change it is already shuttling to Wall Street fundraisers. Both parties are already pandering to this power, so they can find the fix to fund the next cycle of campaigns.
…privately funded public elections tend inevitably towards this kind of corruption. And until we solve that (eminently solvable) problem, we won’t make any progress in making America’s finances safe again. FixCongressFirst. Only then will sensible policy be possible.
With Billionaires running for office and committing $100 million of their own money IN CASH to their campaigns, with Wall Street and lobbyists funneling billions to keep the current governmental/corporate back-scratching going on and to ensure that NO REFORM HAPPENS, American workers will be bankrupted again and again. This Congress is incapable of the change we need, because they are so happy to jump on planes and go to vacation spots, on corporate dimes, while you and I think they are working for us.
Cover of new Newsweek in a waiting room.
Just one question: didn’t the GOP just have 8 years?
Newsweek’s title is: IF THE REPUBLICANS WERE IN CHARGE… Well they got voted out of the majority, and the Presidency. So countering Obama’s agenda might seem like its their job as the opposition party, but its not. When GWB was President, Dems were told to be patriotic and follow their President, which many did. They followed him into a trillion dollar war, trillion dollar deficit and a housing implosion and lobbyist/insurer/banking explosion.
So why, one year in to a Democratic Presidency, are we wondering what the Republicans would do if they were in charge?
We see it every day, the detritus, the lost jobs, the massively increased credit card charges, the $500 million bonuses to bankers who destroyed the world (yes, Goldman Sachs, people still blame you).
Newsweek shows its death knell: NEWS and WEEK are supposed to be going together, not guesstimating what the 8 year veterans have up their sleeve. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the obstructionism, the lack of reform in the financial arena and the refusal to provide Americans with reasonable health care reform.
I tweeted all day yesterday (www.twitter.com/marywallace) during the Healthcare Summit at the White House. A great website, www.sunlightfoundation.com live streamed all day, updating charts next to each speaker with a list of their top career donors! Not surprisingly, many of the Republicans who oppose healthcare reform are fully funded by insurers, banks and lobbyists.
It was shocking to hear man after man after man say, let’s get out a clean piece of paper and start over again. REALLY? After they had done so much work on their own bills? DID THEY BRING CLEAN PIECES OF PAPER TO START WORKING ON THE SPOT? No.
I noticed that the overwhelming majority of Republicans were old white men (I’m talking to you Boehner, even though you’ve got that fake tan going on). In the pockets of the insurance industry and their lobbyists.
But I woke up today to this guy’s face, it looks so shocking in its aged meanness.
Its Jim Bunning, from Kentucky, who single-handedly blocked the Senate from extending unemployment benefits for 1.2 million Americans, while complaining
‘I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00,” he said,
“and it’s the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they’re the only team that has beat Kentucky this year.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Kentucky is 10.7 percent. With a population of 4,200,000, that’s over 420,000 unemployed. NOT GOOD.
As I said yesterday on twitter, Americans forced their government to pull out of the Vietnam war when TV images and newspaper images of dying and dead American soldiers inundated American households. We had believed the rhetoric from Washington, but when our own young men and women came home in wheelchairs and body bags, it was the power of the images that turned the tide in the US government’s ability to continue the war.
We are inundated these days with image after image of Congressmen who deny health insurance reform to working Americans (while covered under government plans themselves), who deny childcare to the working poor (while having it available themselves), who send other people’s kids to war while their own drink excessively underage in bars (I’m talking to you, George W. Bush). The images from the bargaining table yesterday were predominantly old, white men. Sure, old white men run the insurance companies and the banks and the lobbying firms. But if you walk around any city in America, you’ll see all different ages and colors and sexes. How did we whittle down our vision of who should represent us in Congress to one color, one age AND one sex? How did that one type of person end up in charge of everything?
Its time for new employment rules: in order to serve in Congress, you have to agree to take 1/2 the $170,000 salary until your state’s poor and homeless and lower class and middle class are stable. The other half? It goes into a fund to counter the lobbying of your beloved insurers and banks. You get no health insurance until all your state’s citizens are covered. Can’t make that work? Then you don’t deserve cadillac coverage yourself. And if you have a daughter or son of military recruitment age? They go to war until no citizen from your state is overseas. That would stop the illegal multiple re-ups that the military is getting away with.
Seriously, to be in Congress, you should REPRESENT your people. And I’m sure the 10.7% unemployed in his state are not thrilled with his current, very visible, choice of basketball over their ability to feed themselves. Especially knowing that Bunning fought to keep campaign donor information hidden, and paid himself an additional $90,000 a year 2006-2008 from his FOUNDATION while donating less than that from his foundation to charity, because, you know, the Senate paycheck of $170,000 isn’t enough. His greed is shocking, in light of the funds he’s withholding from Americans and his own constituents.
Is it just me, or does ANYone else notice that the bosses of our Representative Leadership are all old white guys, and that they look just like the guys who got us into this recession, the old white guy bankers?
And are they hard at work, both sides of the aisle working together to pull American taxpayers out of this recession? Are they spanking the bankers? Are they creating jobs?
No, they’re involved in a political death match. WITH EACH OTHER.
First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.
And now, Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
What are they doing? Holding up the smooth working of the Government of the United States of America? For their own political good? We have 3 branches of Government and all three are being held up by partisan politics in Congress.
These old white guys do NOT represent the color of America, they do NOT raise their own kids, they do NOT send their own kids into the Military, they DO have family lifetime health insurance, they DO have generous retirement plans… These guys live lives free of the worries of their constituents.
They have NO IDEA what regular Americans are going thru right now. Because they can head off to Hawaii to caucus, or dine with lobbyists at expensive restaurants. They don’t have to listen to regular Americans.
They get to play their little power trips, while utterly ignoring the people who elected them.
FAIL.
According to a CBS News/New York Times poll, 92% of Americans DO NOT WANT THEIR MEMBER OF CONGRESS RE-ELECTED.
Why?
Because 2009 was a record year for lobbyists, who basically have usurped the decision-making that Congress is supposed to be doing.
The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics tallied lobbying income data from tens of thousands of disclosure filings, and the data show that special interests of all stripes spent $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year. How did the influence industry manage such a banner year despite a battered economy? The simple answer is that the Obama administration’s aggressive change agenda has prompted businesses to open their wallets to an unprecedented degree in the hope of preventing reform.According to Robert Reich,
Washington is paralyzed by snow and partisanship. Nothing is getting done — even as the Great Recession pulls more Americans into its maw.
In the midst of this paralysis, the President was asked about the giant pay packages of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($17 mullion for 2009) and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs ($9 million). “First of all, I know both those guys,” Obama said. “They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”
Free market system? As I remember it, American taxpayers forked out hundreds of billions to keep JPMorgan, Goldman, and other big Wall Street banks afloat through most of 2009. Had we not done so, Dimon, Blankfein, and most other top executives on Wall Street would not have earned a dime last year. In fact, some would be out on the street, reather than sitting pretty on the Street. The free market system has been unleashed instead on average Americans.
Why do 92% of Americans want to kick their Members of Congress to the curb?
Because we’re not being heard.
63% of Americans want substantial healthcare reform. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 73% of Americans say not enough has been done to regulate Wall Street. 75% of Americans believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday shows.
Terrible things are happening on Main Street: homes are being foreclosed upon, jobs are being lost, families are in financial crisis and now we have the looming collapse of the commercial real estate market…
What is Congress doing?
Squabbling. Delaying appointments. Lying. Going to tropical locales to discuss how to keep their opponents powerless.
What is Congress NOT DOING?
Serving the American People.
According to the Phoenix Business Journal:
Nearly 900,000 people in Arizona sought emergency food from charities within the past year, according to a national study released Tuesday by Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization.
The study shows more than 37 million Americans — one in eight — receive emergency food each year through the nation’s network of food banks and the agencies they serve.
The findings by the Chicago-based group represent a staggering 46 percent increase since its previous study, conducted in 2006.
“Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America.
The study shows St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance served more than 477,000 of those needing help, providing the bulk of charitable emergency food service in the Valley and throughout Arizona.
St. Mary’s helped gather local information in support of Hunger in America 2010. Among its findings:
• More than 40 percent of the households receiving emergency food assistance include at least one person who is working.
• More than 50 percent reported having to choose between buying food and paying their rent or mortgage.
• More than one-quarter reported having to choose between buying food and paying for medicine or medical care.
• More than 80 percent are U.S. citizens.
• Nearly a quarter are college-educated.
• Nearly 80 percent did not receive any form of government cash assistance, or welfare.
“This survey truly puts a human face on the issue of hunger in our community,” said Terry Shannon, president and CEO of St. Mary’s Food Bank. “We have always said that our work can only be done when neighbors help their neighbors. This shows how true that is. Hunger is an issue in every area, every city, every neighborhood the state.”
The 2010 study includes data collected from February through June 2009. Through participating food banks across the nation, Feeding America collected quantitative and qualitative feedback via 61,000 face-to-face interviews with people seeking emergency food assistance and more than 37,000 agency surveys, making this study the largest, most comprehensive ever conducted on domestic hunger.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in November that an estimated 49 million people, including 17 million children, are at risk of hunger in this country.
More than 50% had to choose between FOOD and HOUSING COSTS?
Something is fundamentally wrong with the corporate running of America… We’ve been sold the myth of ‘you can create wealth here’, but the wealth is going to the banking industry while Americans are hungry.
Remember, this guy is up for $100 million in bonus money!
Looking at the cover of today’s online Huffington Post, one could wonder just how ‘asleep’ Americans really are. Is there no one in charge who can connect the dots and shout from the rooftops how unfair our systems are towards working American Taxpayers? The oligarchy continues to siphon off huge profits from the top, walk away from debts they don’t wish to pay and pay themselves billions in bonuses for their hubris.
Meanwhile, you live within your means, juggle your credit debt, try to keep your home and go to work today so these a**holes can languish in the sun somewhere.
and finally, the piece de resistance,
and this is NOT dated December 2009 or January 2010 but February 1st, 2010…
Yep, they’re gonna pay out $100 Million to the guy who bet AGAINST YOUR FINANCIAL SAFETY.
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